by Marie Hall
Her voice was melodious and enchanting. Unnerving to hear.
She slinked slowly forward in the waters, a gargantuan beast of muscle and scales. The other two heads were no longer paying attention to him, but appeared to be scanning the horizon.
She smiled. “Hm. A man. A beautiful, dark-skinned man. I think we should keep you.”
As she drew closer, something inside of Giles reacted. Something visceral and soul-deep. His ability to hang on to his shadowy form weakened and he felt himself slowly return to his corporeal body against his will. Gritting his teeth, he stared at the now-laughing woman.
“What is your name?” In his home world of Delerium, to learn the name of a dragon was the key to possessing its power and harnessing it for your own.
Giles did not know whether those same rules applied to Kingdom; in fact, this creature was his first encounter with a dragon in several millennia. But he needed to free himself and get to Lilith—goddess only knew what was happening to her.
Power slammed into him, a resonant wave of it that made him growl and forcibly change. The creature was somehow controlling him.
She snorted. “I am no demon. You can do nothing to me by learning my name. I shall oblige you, male.”
Finally she was upon him and he didn’t know whether she planned to eat him or mate him. Reaching up a long, delicate woman’s hand, she caressed the side of his jaw with nimble fingers.
Up close she was terrifyingly beautiful. Part woman, part animal, both blended so perfectly that the mix wasn’t macabre. Rather than the long, reptilian neck of her sisters, the woman had a delicate one that led into femininely curved breasts and a slender waist, but below the waist she had no legs.
That was where her body and those of her sisters merged into a massive frame much larger than a whale’s. Her tail wasn’t split like a fish fin, but instead it was a writhing mass of bright pink and purple octopi tentacles.
The gills in the side of the center most head flapped with a sudden rush of water as the heads inhaled.
“I am Sonora. She,” she pointed to the left head, “is Leeta, and she,” she pointed to the center, “is Ankh.”
She moistened her lips and cocked her head in a serpentine bobbing and weaving motion.
“Where is your companion, male?” Sonora’s smile grew wider.
He swallowed, shoving at the box he was still trapped inside of. How had she reached into it to touch him and yet he could not move out of it?
“I have no companion,” he grunted, still trying to push through the barrier.
She hissed and lifted her hand as if to slap him. “Do not lie to us! We saw you, both of you. You thought to come into our home and steal our jewels.” She snarled, curling her lip, exposing the sharp array of fangs.
Shaking his head, he snapped, “We do not care a whit about jewels, we seek only to cross this canyon.”
Tipping her head back, she laughed. The snakes of her hair waved wildly about, many of them looking at him with a flat, black, merciless gaze.
“Man.” Her two-toned eyes caressed his body. “I will treat you as a prized jewel if you give me what I want. Where is the girl?” she growled and a jet of scorching steam bellowed from Ankh’s nostrils, spraying him.
Bellowing as the heat of it singed his flesh, Giles pounded on the box.
“Hey, snake face!” a familiar female voice growled. “Looking for me?”
Giles turned around just in time to see Lilith’s long red hood flap behind her as she jackknifed her body off the edge of the cliff, shifting in midflight into the form of her wolf.
The brilliant flash of fire soon gave way to the silky red pelt of her beast, and clutched in her mouth was a creamy white stone that sparkled as she ran.
“The opal!” Sonora cried and pointed, and soon the dragon was swimming off, charging toward the direction of Lilith who wasn’t running away, but was headed toward the shore.
The box that’d held him suddenly dissolved. Giles crashed into the water, slipping beneath its turbulent waves. Shifting quickly to shadow, he bolted out of the liquid cocoon and flew to Lilith’s side.
The chit was standing on the beach, shifted back to female form and smirking as she clutched the stone in her palm.
Sonora and her sisters were screaming, slapping the waters with their tentacles as Ankh continued to shoot jets of steam from her nostrils. As a shade, Giles could not help in the fight.
So he shifted quickly to physical form and dropped onto the back of Leeta, yanking a steel dirk from his boot and in one smooth motion grabbing the back of the dragon’s skull while placing the dirk against its throat.
The serpentine head hissed, flicking its black tongue in and out as Sonora screeched.
“This steel is strong enough to cut through dragon scales. Give us safe passage or I’ll kill her!” he growled, shoving the blade in just a tiny bit deeper, almost to the point of puncturing the neck.
“No!” It wasn’t the dragon who yelled it, but Lilith.
She was staring at him, wide-eyed, and visibly grinding her molars. “They will not harm us while I carry their precious water stone. Come to me.”
Grimacing, he moved his blade, this time actually penetrating the tough hide into the tender flesh beneath. A drop of blood welled on his blade before falling to the water beneath. The moment it landed the water turned a frothy, bloody red around the dragon and began to snap and jump with razor sharp fins that appeared as though from nothing.
His nostrils flared. “If I release it they will kill us, Lilith. That is what a dragon does. Use the wish!”
How could she not understand that? He’d thought them safe when they crossed into the canyon earlier in the day because he’d spotted no water, but now that they’d intruded on the sanctity of a dragon’s nest there would be no mercy from this violent creature.
“Give us our stone and we shall let you live,” Sonora begged with tears glimmering in her eyes as she reached helplessly toward the shore.
Lilith chuckled. “You think me a fool, don’t you? I’ll tell you what happens if I give you this stone now.” Her smile turned to a snarl. “You’ll slay us where we stand and pick your teeth with our bones. No. I will keep this stone—”
“You would condemn us to death!” Sonora’s voice boomed with thunder and the world around them heaved. Thick slabs of rock broke away from the mountain’s side, sliding into the water with hard smacks.
The fins below began to leap out of the waters. And the creatures attached to them were not fish at all, but green-skinned men with webbed feet and hands and smushed faces that had little more than black slits for mouths and eyes.
Lip curling in revulsion, Giles shifted just enough to give him leverage to decapitate the beast. But again Lilith held out her hand.
“You do that and there will only be more. She is part dragon, part hydra. You cannot kill her that way, Giles!”
Her words stayed his hand. “What?” He glanced up.
There was a freneticism to her eyes that told him she did not lie. A hydra was an ancient, mythological creature. One of fancy and folly, told as bedtime stories to scare little children. A serpent-headed monster that always had at least two heads, but most times three, and cutting off one head would only cause three more to take its place. Meaning the situation could go from dire to nightmarish in a heartbeat.
“Dragon, I seek to barter,” Lilith turned to Sonora.
“You’d dare.” She flashed her fangs. “You’ve nothing to barter, you’ve stolen our stone. I will fillet you both, starting with the man.”
Twisting, she reached out for Giles, clawed hands within inches when she let out a blood-curdling scream. Grabbing hold of her head, she cried out, “Stop. Stop.”
The other two heads were similarly screeching, wailing, and undulating their long, sinuous necks back and forth, their tentacles slapping the waters violently.
Lilith was breathing heavily, clawing at the stone with her nails. “You will not kill us.
You will give us safe harbor. Once through, I shall drop the stone in your waiting hand. Do we have a deal?”
Faces contorted into demonic masks of fury, Sonora thundered, “Deal.”
Eyes swiveling immediately toward Giles direction, Lilith beckoned him to her. “Come here, knight. Quickly.”
Tucking his dirk away, Giles morphed back into shadow. He was angry, relieved, and so bloody confused by the time he got to her it was all he could do not to yank her into his arms and kiss the top of her head while growling at her that she’d been foolish to do what she’d done.
“Grab my hand,” Lilith rushed out, “and get us out of here now!”
Giles grabbed Lilith’s hand and willed not only his body but also hers to become no more dense than the air they breathed. Once shifted, he hurtled them above the canyon to the safety of the land above.
Gulping and gasping when she shifted back to her human form, Lilith called out, “As promised, dragon.”
Sonora lifted her hand and snatched the water stone from the air. “You ever return, and we will kill you!”
Giles stood on the edge of the bluff watching as the dragon sank back into the water, which receded the instant they’d interned themselves. The land below shifted, becoming nothing more than a dry bed of red sand again.
Collapsing back onto the dirt, Lilith covered her eyes with her forearm. “You tell me again how much Rumpel values your service.”
They were spent by the time they stumbled into the glen. The shelter waiting for them was a hole dug into a massive redwood tree trunk. Lilith opened the door and headed inside, never looking back at him.
They’d not talked much after the battle with the dragon—mainly because Giles was upset. True, her method had gotten them out of a bind, but there was no guarantee that it would work the next time. It’d been reckless folly, but even though he was angry, he was also puzzled. Because the sense of relief he’d felt when he’d latched on to her hand—the way just the feel of her soft palm sliding into his had broken his body out in a wash of goosebumps, how his first thought hadn’t been anger, but the knowledge that Lilith was safe—had overwhelmed him.
And he was still baffled by his emotions, so he said nothing until he was sure he wouldn’t be tempted to admit to either need.
The interior of the tree trunk was sparsely furnished. There were two dwarf-sized beds hewn from the wooden walls. Sitting on a small shelf were a basket of apples and several loaves of freshly baked bread.
Lilith picked one up and took it with her to her bed. She didn’t look at him as she lay back on the bed.
Realizing he couldn’t continue to ignore her indefinitely, he sought neutral ground.
“What is this place? Does it belong to someone?” he asked, realizing she might not give him more than a one-word answer, but unsure whether they should make themselves at home, as she was currently doing.
“Tree elves.” She bit into her bread. “They’ve designed this place for weary travelers. They only ask that you make sure it’s tidy in the morning.”
“Huh.” He’d never heard of such a thing, but she’d rolled over onto her side and was now facing the wall.
It was a clear signal to him that she wished to be left alone.
Sighing, he grabbed an apple and took a bite out of it. Outside the night sky gleamed with thousands of twinkling stars. It was a nice place to rest his head, he supposed.
Giving her one final look, he also turned onto his side and soon they both fell asleep.
They left everything tidy in the morning, and for the next several days their routine was the same. Travel with little talk between them and stop at one of the elven dwellings when night fell.
For a few days he’d tried to extend an olive branch, attempting to help her cross creek beds, or handing her a bunch of wild roses he’d plucked from a bush. He wasn’t sure why he continued to try so hard, but each time he did she would give him a withering look and ignore his proffered hand. He’d thought he’d made some headway with the flowers—she’d stared at them for a long while—but eventually she’d turned her face to the side and jogged away. After that he’d stopped trying to get her to talk to him.
But after two weeks of near silence, Giles slammed his hands down on his thighs. “Are you cross with me, Lilith?”
There was a question in her eyes. “Why?”
“Because you hardly talk anymore.”
She opened her mouth and then quickly clamped it shut. “I was going to tell you nothing, but that wouldn’t be true. I have a question for you, knight. What have I done wrong?”
Giles was no longer angry about the stone—that’d happened days ago and he was mostly over it—but the truth of it was he missed the woman he’d met days ago. The one who made him laugh, even when she wasn’t trying to. The one with a sharp tongue and ready wit, it was nonsense…mostly because they didn’t know one another well, but he’d had fun with her, and up until the dragon he’d thought she’d had fun with him, too. Not that this trip should be about fun, but it didn’t have to be this strained, either.
“Nothing.” He shook his head, knowing he couldn’t tell her how he really felt because it even sounded foolish in his head.
Her lips thinned. “Sure.” Snorting, she pounded a fist into her pillow.
He wanted to ask her what he’d done wrong this time, but he wasn’t even sure where to start. Her silence shouldn’t bother him the way it was, and yet he could not deny that it did.
Frowning, he made to lie down, ready to put yet another day of travel behind him when her voice broke him from his thoughts.
“Enjoy this. Tonight is the final night we’ll have these ready-made shelters. Tomorrow we break free of elven territory and head into the more wild portion of Kingdom.”
She didn’t give him a chance to respond back. Instead she snatched up another loaf of bread and rolled onto her side. Giving him a prime view of her backside.
The lass had definitely put on some curves in the two weeks they’d been together. A steady diet of nothing but fruit and bread had filled her out nicely. It bothered him that he noticed, but the blood pooling between his thighs attested to the fact that he’d long been without a woman. And though the two of them were like oil and water, she was a beautiful woman.
With a muttered oath beneath his breath, he rolled over onto his side and tried to get some sleep. At some point he must have brushed against the wood while he’d been sleeping, he woke up with a hiss and stared at his now-throbbing hand.
“What?” Lilith’s whisper drew his gaze to her shadowy form.
There was no light within the tree house save the glow of moonlight. Touching a finger to his palm, he grimaced as a sharp burst of pain ran like fire down his wrist. “I don’t know, I think I may have gotten a splinter.”
“Can you shift and make it fall out?”
“No.” He shook his head, turning his palm into the brightest swath of moon glow, which wasn’t much, as he tried to pinpoint where the splinter lay. “It’ll be there until I take it out.”
He didn’t hear her move, but suddenly she was beside his bed. Her soft gaze was staring down at him. “I can pull it out if you trust me.”
It wasn’t a life-threatening injury, but it throbbed and would make him unable to sleep peacefully until he had it extracted. “Yes. I trust you.” He held out his hand.
Suddenly she was glowing amber and then a second later she’d become her wolf. Her pretty blue wolfy eyes stared at him for just a second and then she shoved her nose under his palm so that he turned it upward.
Then, very gently, her tongue came out and traced the length of his palm. It was a soft, gentle touch, and he wasn’t sure what she was doing. He almost asked her, when her tongue scraped over the splinter.
Clenching his teeth, his body tensed up.
She gave a soft, snuffling noise, as if to say, Okay, there it is, and then she opened her mouth, and, using her teeth, she delicately latched on to the tip of it and pulled it f
ree.
He breathed a sigh of relief when it came out, rubbing at the now-itchy spot. Calling her light, she shifted once more and held up the splinter to him. “That’s a big boy.”
Taking it from her hand, he stared at the four-inch sliver of wood and shuddered. He could have eventually gotten it out, but her way had been much swifter and less painful. Humbled because of the uncharitable thoughts he’d had of her earlier in the day, he muttered a swift, “Thank you, wolf.”
But she was already back on her bed and laying on her side, and regardless of the momentary flash of kindness she’d shown him, he knew that many unspoken words still remained between them.
Ahead windows glowed with firelight and the air smelled heavily of smoke and roasted meats.
They really hadn’t spoken for days, and at this point Lilith was too tired to care. No, she did care. She shouldn’t. But she did.
And it wasn’t even so much his silence, which annoyed her greatly, so much as being disgusted with herself for caring. She’d tried hard to lock her emotions away when she was around him, reminding herself constantly that she had no right to even entertain the possibility of enjoying his company.
Because admitting to liking having him around would be opening the floodgates to other emotions that could lead her down a winding, slippery path straight to her death. Which wasn’t an exaggeration at all.
Just the thought of it made her sigh with disgust and disappointment. No matter how hard she tried to ignore him, it seemed it only made her more aware of him.
Maybe she was just tired. And it certainly didn’t help that she was in heat she was sure. What she needed now was food and a bed. In that order.
But first…
Now that they were safely beyond the boundaries of the shifters land, it was time to call upon her magic.
“While we walk through the bandits’ forests,” she said, turning to Giles who was staring at her with a hard, penetrating look she could not decipher, “I will pretend to be little more than a weak human. Any element of surprise we can have on our side is worth salvaging, and things will get worse from here on out.”
